Geographic Integration of Industry on the Wynants Kill, 1816-1911 Robert Dalton Harris and Diane DeBlois The small Wynants Kill is known in the history of waterpower for Merritt vs. Brinkerhoff in 1820 and for the Burden water wheel, largest in the world in 1851, events that bracket the first, intense, period of industrialization on the stream (a “portrait” of the climax period is derived from data in the 1855 census of New York State). In addition to the mill sites’ connection by geography and their feudal tenure, a cooperative association formed by the lessees of the water privileges in 1829, industrial arrangements, and com- munity development also connected them vertically. Postal indices, generated from the Official Registers (an under- appreciated business data source) provide the measure and timing of this initial industrialization and the subsequent rejuvenations of livelihood in the Wynants Kill watershed. The Wynants Kill is a very small tributary of the Hudson River (just 14.1 miles long with a drainage basin of 29.1 square miles), but it falls some 850 feet, notably down the steps of three shale overthrusts, each providing many excellent sites for the development of waterpower. The stream draws our attention because of its rapid industrialization, leading to the powering of the largest water wheel in the world by the mid-nineteenth century,1 and for the cooperative organization of its waterpower in the wake of the 1820 court decision of Merritt vs. Brinkerhoff.2 These two exemplifications, extrinsic/intrinsic and technological/ geographical, are complementary: the warp and weft of social networks. We learn from the Wynants Kill how geographic pattern becomes implicit in community, relieving the need for explicit control in the economic 1 Henry Burden’s overshot wheel of 1851 was not the largest in diameter (two in Scotland were larger), but it provided the most power (278 horsepower before gearing down). It was 62 feet in diameter and 22 feet in breadth and operated continuously, day and night, until 1896. The Burden wheel was the subject of four graduate theses at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) between 1855 and 1867. Louis C. Hunter, Waterpower: A History of Industrial Power in the United States, 1780-1930, (Charlottesville, Va., 1979), 571. 2 “Cases in the Supreme Court of the State of New York” 17 (Albany, N.Y., 1820): 306-25. For text of summary precedent see note 8. Robert Dalton Harris and Diane DeBlois are independent scholars; email: [email protected]. © Business History Conference, 2006. All rights reserved. URL: http://www.thebhc.org/publications/BEH/2005/harrisanddeblois.pdf. Robert Dalton Harris and Diane DeBlois // Industry on the Wynants Kill 2 result. We learn how the multiple choices of technology serve communal needs. In a way, geography is the “invisible hand” shaping the commercial potential of the stream.3 Unlike the Hudson River and most of its tributaries, the Wynants Kill drains northward. When the glaciers retreated, gravels left behind in the watersheds of streams that drained southward were flushed downstream. In the Wynants Kill and its chain of small lakes, they remained as deposited to operate as ideal water holding sinks. Jedediah Morse observed that no New Yorker is more than 20 miles (or a day’s hike) from a navigable waterway.4 When Henry Hudson sailed into the largest fresh water tidal estuary in the world looking for a global sea route, he might have been disappointed that navigation ended at what would become Albany. However, the patroon KilliaenVan Rensselaer who received development rights to the area under the Dutch West India Company recognized the watery advantages. His 1,152 square miles were the gateway to an ocean port (and global markets), the Mohawk River leading west (especially important once canalized), and the valley going north to lakes George and Champlain to the St. Lawrence River. The Wynants Kill and its sister streams were not navigable, but offered the advantage of power potential to produce, at first, lumber and grain for both local use and shipment to benefit Dutch coffers. The patroon system of feudal settlement begun in 1629 was maintained in 1685 under British Royal Charter and upheld by the new republic. Mill Site Leases Stephen Van Rensselaer III, in taking over the management of the manor of Rensselaerwyck in 1785, determined to realize commercial gain, not mere subsistence, from his tenants. The contracts drawn up with the tenants of farms surveyed in 1788 for the patroon by Job Gilbert and Evert Van Alen (along the Wynants Kill and throughout “Middletown” as well as 3 Crucial to the “invisible hand” as a sensible notion is that individuals are rational (always, in the realm of numbers implicating scale) and selfish, or honest to a rational “self.” In the case of mill owners along this stream, individual acts compile themselves in the aggregate to maximize the communal result in terms of the scales of individual choice. The question is how the linkage works between the individual acts and the cumulative result: is it primarily hierarchical, according to a “mechanical” determinism; or is it social, working through personal, familial, institutional networks? We see that, on the Kill, it is more social than hierarchical: the “firm” arising to deal with the transaction costs less important than the efficiency of the landscape. 4 Jedediah Morse, Geography Made Easy (Boston, Mass., 1813), 150. From the entry on “New York”: “there are few places which are more than 15 or 20 miles from some boatable or navigable stream.” Robert Dalton Harris and Diane DeBlois // Industry on the Wynants Kill 3 FIGURE 1 Outline map of the Wynants Kill watershed (on a current New York State Department of Transportation base map) Source: Courtesy Warren Broderick. Notes: With the approximate locations of the 19 water privileges, grouped: 1 to 3 in Troy, 4 and 5 between Troy and Albia, 6 to 8 at Albia, 9 and 10 below West Sand Lake, 11 and 12 in West Sand Lake, 13 to 18 in Averill Park (formerly Sand Lake), and 19 at Glass Lake. List of Mill Changes at the Water Privilege (WP) Sites: (WP 1) Sawmill (1656-1700s), Grist Mill (1793-1858), Steel Works (1863- circa 1911), Coke Plant (1920-1972) (WP 1a) Iron Works (1862-1972) (WP 2) Fulling Mill (circa 1800-1807), Iron Works (1807-1989) (WP 3) Iron Works (1810-1898) (WP 4) Paper Mill (1802-1930), Hydroelectric for WP 7 (1912-1952) (WP 5) Paper Mill (circa 1810-1814), Flour Mill (1829-1858), Paper Mill (1858-1952) (WP 6) Grist Mill (circa 1820-1905), Textile Mill (c. 1905-c. 1956) (WP 6a) Bleachery (circa 1820-1841), Woolen Factory (1845-1891) Robert Dalton Harris and Diane DeBlois // Industry on the Wynants Kill 4 (WP 7) Woolen Factory (1827-1871), Knitting Factory (1875-1900), Box & Paper Factory (1900-1952) (WP 8) Fulling Mill (circa 1800-1812), Wool & Cotton Factory (1812-1871), Knitting Factory (1875-1918), Yarn Factory (1918-1948) Snyders Lake (488 feet above sea level) (WP 9) Sawmill (1788-1891) (WP 10) Grist Mill (before 1820-1891), Hydroelectric (1911-1924) Reichards Lake (589 feet above sea level) (WP 11) Grist Mill (1768-1950s) (WP 11a) Cloth Works (1855-1880) (WP 12) Sawmill (1788-1848), Cloth Works (1848-c. 1880), Knitting Factory (1880-1956) (WP 12a) Knitting Factory (1909-1940), Carding & Spinning Factory (1940-1952) Burden Lake (628 feet above sea level) (WP 13) Sawmill (1788-1834), Fulling & Carding Mill (1834-1844), Paper Mill (1845-1891) (WP 14) Cloth Dressing (1820-1827), Cotton Factory (1827-1834), Cloth Mill (1834-c. 1845), Woolen Mill (c. 1846-1870), Hosiery Mill (1870-1875) (WP 15) Sawmill (c. 1810-1829), Cotton Factory (1829-1875), Warp Mill (1875-1886), Knitting (1897-1960) (WP 15a) Grist Mill (1802-c. 1830) (WP 16) Satinet Mill (1829-c. 1835), Grist Mill (c. 1835-1866), Knitting Factory (1866-1956) (WP 17) Tannery (1823-1835), Sawmill (1835-1842). Tannery (1843-1862), Knitting Factory (1862-1880), Hosiery (1880-1891) (WP 18) Sawmill (1788-1825), Woolen Factory (1825-1862), Hosiery (1862-1871) Crystal Lake (770 feet above sea level) (WP 19) Sawmill (1797-1806), Glass Factory (1806-1852) Glass Lake (828 feet above sea level) Crooked Lake (828 feet above sea level) in the other areas of Rensselaerwyck) rented farmers the use of land and required them to make tax payments, while the patroon retained the water and timber rights and extracted one-quarter of the sale price every time the farm was sold. Van Rensselaer intended to lease the water privileges separately and advantageously.5 Eventually, there were nineteen water 5 In 1650, the patroon had taken away waterpower rights at the mouth of the Kill from Thomas Chambers, who had leased both the farm and the right to build a sawmill, and given them to another man who, in turn, asked to be released from the agreement. In 1656, Abraham Pietersz Vosburgh and Hans Jansz Van Rotterdam built the first recorded mill on the Wynants Kill. Robert Dalton Harris and Diane DeBlois // Industry on the Wynants Kill 5 privileges engineered on the Wynants Kill. We based this paper on our editing of a local history initiative to fully map these nineteen sites and to untangle the mill histories at each (see Figure 1 and list following).6 Van Rensselaer rented WP 11 to Joshua Lockwood and William Carpenter in 1768, and WP 1 to David DeFreest in 1793 to build gristmills. Both mills preceded the settlement of their areas. The site at the mouth of the Wynants Kill took advantage of riverine transport before Troy’s founding in 1789. The site where the King’s Road (completed 1754 from Bath, opposite Albany on the Hudson, to Deerfield in Massachusetts) intersected the Wynants Kill also exercised transport advantage, even before the hamlet of Ulinesville developed.7 With respect to WP 1 and WP 11, river and road gave these gristmills greater market reach.